When John Thornton froze his feet in the previous
December, his partners had made him comfortable and left
him to get well, going on themselves up the river to get
out a raft of saw-logs for Dawson. He was still limping
slightly at the time he rescued Buck, but with the continued
warm weather even the slight limp left him. And here, lying
by the river bank through the long spring days, watching
the running water, listening lazily to the songs of birds and
the hum of nature, Buck slowly won back his strength.

A rest comes very good after one has traveled three
thousand miles, and it must be confessed that Buck waxed lazy
as his wounds healed, his muscles swelled out, and the flesh
came back to cover his bones. For that matter, they were
all loafing,--Buck, John Thornton, and Skeet and Nig--waiting
for the raft to come that was to carry them down to Dawson.
Skeet was a little Irish setter who early made friends with
Buck, who, in a dying condition, was unable to resent her
first advances. She had the doctor trait which some dogs
possess; and as a mother cat washes her kittens, so she
washed and cleansed Buck's wounds. Regularly, each morning
after he had finished his breakfast, she performed her
self-appointed task, till he came to look for her
ministrations as much as he did for Thornton's. Nig,
equally friendly though less demonstrative, was a huge black
dog, half-bloodhound and half-deerhound, with eyes that
laughed and a boundless good nature.

To Buck's surprise these dogs manifested no jealousy
toward him. They seemed to share the kindliness and
largeness of John Thornton. As Buck grew stronger they
enticed him into all sorts of ridiculous games, in which
Thornton himself could not forbear to join; and in this
fashion Buck romped through his convalescence and into a new
existence. Love, genuine passionate love, was his for the
first time. This he had never experienced at Judge Miller's
down in the sun-kissed Santa Clara Valley. With the Judge's
sons, hunting and tramping, it had been a working
partnership; with the Judge's grandsons, a sort of pompous
guardianship; and with the Judge himself, a stately and
dignified friendship. But love that was feverish and
burning, that was adoration, that was madness, it had taken
John Thornton to arouse.

This man had saved his life, which was something; but,
further, he was the ideal master. Other men saw to the
welfare of their dogs from a sense of duty and business
expediency; he saw to the welfare of his as if they were his
own children, because he could not help it. And he saw
further. He never forgot a kindly greeting or a cheering
word, and to sit down for a long talk with them --"gas" he
called it-- was as much his delight as theirs. He had a way of
taking Buck's head roughly between his hands, and resting
his own head upon Buck's, of shaking him back and forth,
the while calling him ill names that to Buck were love
names. Buck knew no greater joy than that rough embrace and
the sound of murmured oaths, and at each jerk back and forth
it seemed that his heart would be shaken out of his body,
so great was its ecstasy. And when, released, he sprang to
his feet, his mouth laughing, his eyes eloquent, his throat
vibrant with unuttered sound, and in that fashion remained
without movement, John Thornton would reverently exclaim, "God!
you can all but speak!"

Buck had a trick of love expression that was akin to
hurt. He would often seize Thornton's hand in his mouth
and close so fiercely that the flesh bore the impress of his
teeth for some time afterward. And as Buck understood the
oaths to be love words, so the man understood this feigned
bite for a caress.

For the most part, however, Buck's love was expressed in
adoration. While he went wild with happiness when Thornton
touched him or spoke to him, he did not seek these tokens.
Unlike Skeet, who was wont to shove her nose under Thornton's
hand and nudge and nudge till petted, or Nig, who would
stalk up and rest his great head on Thornton's knee, Buck
was content to adore at a distance. He would lie by the
hour, eager, alert, at Thornton's feet, looking up into
his face, dwelling upon it, studying it, following with
keenest interest each fleeting expression, every movement or
change of feature. Or, as chance might have it, he would lie
farther away, to the side or rear, watching the outlines
of the man and the occasional movements of his body. And
often, such was the communion in which they lived, the
strength of Buck's gaze would draw John Thornton's head
around, and he would return the gaze, without speech, his
heart shining out of his eyes as Buck's heart shone out.

For a long time after his rescue, Buck did not like
Thornton to get out of his sight. From the moment he left
the tent to when he entered it again, Buck would follow at
his heels. His transient masters since he had come into the
Northland had bred in him a fear that no master could be
permanent. He was afraid that Thornton would pass out of his
life as Perrault and Francois and the Scotch half-breed had
passed out. Even in the night, in his dreams, he was
haunted by this fear. At such times he would shake off
sleep and creep through the chill to the flap of the tent,
where he would stand and listen to the sound of his master's
breathing.

But in spite of this great love he bore John Thornton,
which seemed to bespeak the soft civilizing influence, the
strain of the primitive, which the Northland had aroused in
him, remained alive and active. Faithfulness and devotion,
things born of fire and roof, were his; yet he retained his
wildness and wiliness. He was a thing of the wild, come
in from the wild to sit by John Thornton's fire, rather
than a dog of the soft Southland stamped with the marks of
generations of civilization. Because of his very great love,
he could not steal from this man, but from any other man, in
any other camp, he did not hesitate an instant; while the
cunning with which he stole enabled him to escape detection.

His face and body were scored by the teeth of many
dogs, and he fought as fiercely as ever and more shrewdly.
Skeet and Nig were too good-natured for quarreling --besides,
they belonged to John Thornton; but the strange dog, no
matter what the breed or valor, swiftly acknowledged Buck's
supremacy or found himself struggling for life with a
terrible antagonist. And Buck was merciless. He had learned
well the law of club and fang, and he never forewent an
advantage or drew back from a foe he had started on the
way to death. He had lessoned from Spitz, and from the
chief fighting dogs of the police and mail, and knew there was
no middle course. He must master or be mastered; while to
show mercy was a weakness. Mercy did not exist in the
primordial life. It was misunderstood for fear, and such
misunderstandings made for death. Kill or be killed, eat
or be eaten, was the law; and this mandate, down out of the
depths of Time, he obeyed.

He was older than the days he had seen and the breaths
he had drawn. He linked the past with the present, and the
eternity behind him throbbed through him in a mighty rhythm
to which he swayed as the tides and seasons swayed. He sat
by John Thornton's fire, a broad-breasted dog, white-fanged
and long-furred; but behind him were the shades of all
manner of dogs, half wolves and wild wolves, urgent and
prompting, tasting the savor of the meat he ate,
thirsting for the water he drank, scenting the wind with
him, listening with him and telling him the sounds made by
the wild life in the forest; dictating his moods,
directing his actions, lying down to sleep with him when he
lay down, and dreaming with him and beyond him and becoming
themselves the stuff of his dreams.

So peremptorily did these shades beckon him, that each day
mankind and the claims of mankind slipped farther from him.
Deep in the forest a call was sounding, and as often as
he heard this call, mysteriously thrilling and luring, he
felt compelled to turn his back upon the fire and the
beaten earth around it, and to plunge into the forest, and
on and on, he knew not where or why; nor did he wonder
where or why, the call sounding imperiously, deep in the
forest. But as often as he gained the soft unbroken earth
and the green shade, the love for John Thornton drew him
back to the fire again.

Thornton alone held him. The rest of mankind was as
nothing. Chance travelers might praise or pet him; but he
was cold under it all, and from a too demonstrative man he
would get up and walk away. When Thornton's partners, Hans
and Pete, arrived on the long-expected raft, Buck refused to
notice them till he learned they were close to Thornton;
after that he tolerated them in a passive sort of way,
accepting favors from them as though he favored them by
accepting. They were of the same large type as Thornton,
living close to the earth, thinking simply and seeing
clearly; and ere they swung the raft into the big eddy by
the saw-mill at Dawson, they understood Buck and his ways,
and did not insist upon an intimacy such as obtained with
Skeet and Nig.

For Thornton, however, his love seemed to grow and grow.
He, alone among men, could put a pack upon Buck's back in
the summer traveling. Nothing was too great for Buck to
do, when Thornton commanded. One day (they had grub-staked
themselves from the proceeds of the raft and left Dawson for
the head waters of the Tanana) ^the men and dogs were sitting
on the crest of a cliff which fell away, straight down, to
naked bedrock three hundred feet below. John Thornton was
sitting near the edge, Buck at his shoulder. A thoughtless
whim seized Thornton, and he drew the attention of Hans and
Pete to the experiment he had in mind. "Jump, Buck!" he
commanded, sweeping his arm out and over the chasm. The
next instant he was grappling with Buck on the extreme edge,
while Hans and Pete were dragging them back into safety.

"It's uncanny," Pete said, after it was over and they
had caught their speech.

Thornton shook his head. "No, it is splendid, and it is
terrible, too. Do you know, it sometimes makes me afraid."

"I'm not hankering to be the man that lays hands on you
while he's around," Pete announced conclusively, nodding his
head toward Buck.

"Py Jingo!" was Hans's contribution. "Not mineself either."

It was at Circle City, ere the year was out, that Pete's
apprehensions were realized. "Black" Burton, a man evil
tempered and malicious, had been picking a quarrel with a
tenderfoot at the bar, when Thornton stepped good naturedly
between. Buck, as was his custom, was lying in a corner,
head on paws, watching his master's every action.
Burton struck out, without warning, straight from the
shoulder. Thornton was sent spinning, and saved himself
from falling only by clutching the rail of the bar.

Those who were looking on heard what was neither bark
nor yelp, but a something which is best described as a
roar, and `they saw Buck's body rise up in the air as he
left the floor for Burton's throat. The man saved his
life by instinctively throwing out his arm, but was hurled
backward to the floor with Buck on top of him. Buck loosed
his teeth from the flesh of the arm and drove in again for
the throat. This time the man succeeded only in partly
blocking, and his throat was torn open.` Then the crowd
was upon Buck, and he was driven off; but while a surgeon
checked the bleeding, he prowled up and down, growling
furiously, attempting to rush in, and being forced back by an
array of hostile clubs. A "miners' meeting" called on the
spot, decided that the dog had sufficient provocation, and
Buck was discharged. But his reputation was made, and from
that day his name spread through every camp in Alaska.

Later on, in the fall of the year, he saved John
Thornton's life in quite another fashion. The three partners
were lining a long and narrow poling boat down a bad stretch of
rapids on the Forty Mile Creek. Hans and Pete moved along the
bank, snubbing with a thin Manila rope from tree to tree,
while Thornton remained in the boat, helping its descent by
means of a pole, and shouting directions to the shore.
Buck, on the bank, worried and anxious, kept abreast of
the boat, his eyes never off his master.

At a particularly bad spot, where a ledge of barely
submerged rocks jutted out into the river, Hans cast off the
rope, and, while Thornton poled the boat out into the
stream, ran down the bank with the end in his hand to
snub the boat when it had cleared the ledge. This it did,
and was flying down-stream in a current as swift as a
mill-race, when Hans checked it with the rope and checked too
suddenly. The boat flirted over and snubbed in to the bank
bottom up, while Thornton, flung sheer out of it, was carried
down-stream toward the worst part of the rapids, a stretch
of wild water in which no swimmer could live.

Buck had sprung in on the instant; and at the end of
three hundred yards, amid a mad swirl of water, he
over-hauled Thornton. When he felt him grasp his tail,
Buck headed for the bank, swimming with all his splendid
strength. But the progress shoreward was slow; the
progress down-stream amazingly rapid. From below came the
fatal roaring where the wild current went wilder and was
rent in shreds and spray by the rocks which thrust
through like the teeth of an enormous comb. The suck of the
water as it took the beginning of the last steep pitch was
frightful, and Thornton knew that the shore was impossible.
He scraped furiously over a rock, bruised across a second,
and struck a third with crushing force. He clutched its
slippery top with both hands, releasing Buck, and above the
roar of the churning water shouted: "Go, Buck! Go!"

Buck could not hold his own, and swept on downstream,
struggling desperately, but unable to win back. When he
heard Thornton's command repeated, he partly reared out of
the water, throwing his head high, as though for a last look,
then turned obediently toward the bank. He swam powerfully
and was dragged ashore by Pete and Hans at the very point where
swimming ceased to be possible and destruction began.

They knew that the time a man could cling to a
slippery rock in the face of that driving current was a
matter of minutes, and they ran as fast as they could up the
bank to a point far above where Thornton was hanging on. They
attached the line with which they had been snubbing the
boat to Buck's neck and shoulders, being careful that it
should neither strangle him nor impede his swimming, and
launched him into the stream. He struck out boldly, but not
straight enough into the stream. He discovered the mistake
too late, when Thornton was abreast of him and a bare
half-dozen strokes away while he was being carried helplessly
past.

Hans promptly snubbed with the rope, as though Buck were
a boat. The rope thus tightening on him in the sweep of the
current, he was jerked under the surface, and under the
surface he remained till his body struck against the bank
and he was hauled out. He was half drowned, and Hans and Pete
threw themselves upon him, pounding the breath into him and
the water out of him. He staggered to his feet and fell
down. The faint sound of Thornton's voice came to them, and
though they could not make out the words of it, they knew
that he was in his extremity. His master's voice acted on
Buck like an electric shock. He sprang to his feet and ran
up the bank ahead of the men to the point of his previous
departure.

Again the rope was attached and he was launched, and
again he struck out, but this time straight into the stream.
He had miscalculated once, but he would not be guilty of it
a second time. Hans paid out the rope, permitting no
slack, while Pete kept it clear of coils. buck held on
till he was on a line straight above Thornton; then he turned,
and with the speed of an express train headed down upon him.
Thornton saw him coming, and, as Buck struck him like a
battering ram, with the whole force of the current behind
him, he reached up and closed with both arms around the
shaggy neck. Hans snubbed the rope around the tree, and
Buck and Thornton were jerked under the water. Strangling,
suffocating, sometimes one uppermost and sometimes the other,
dragging over the jagged bottom, smashing against rocks and
snags, they veered in to the bank.

Thornton came to, belly downward and being violently
propelled back and forth across a drift log by Hans and Pete.
His first glance was for Buck, over whose limp and apparently
lifeless body Nig was setting up a howl, while Skeet was
licking the wet face and closed eyes. Thornton was himself
bruised and battered, and he went carefully over Buck's
body, when he had been brought around, finding three broken
ribs.

"That settles it," he announced. "We camp right here."
And camp they did, till Buck's ribs knitted and he was able
to travel.

That winter, at Dawson, Buck performed another exploit,
not so heroic perhaps, but one that puts his name many
notches higher on the totem pole of Alaskan fame. This
exploit was particularly gratifying to the three men; for
they stood in need of the outfit which it furnished, and
were enabled to make a long-desired trip into the virgin
East, where miners had not yet appeared. It was brought
about by a conversation in the Eldorado Saloon, in which men
waxed boastful of their favorite dogs. Buck, because of his
record, was the target for these men, and Thornton was
driven stoutly to defend him. At the end of half an hour one
man stated that his dog could start a sled with five
hundred pounds and walk off with it; a second bragged six
hundred for his dog; and a third, seven hundred.

"Pooh! Pooh!" said John Thornton. "Buck can start a
thousand pounds."

"And break it out, and walk off with it for a hundred
yards?" demanded Matthewson, a Bonanza king, he of the seven
hundred vaunt.

"And break it out, and walk off with it for a hundred
yards," John Thornton said cooly.

"Well," Matthewson said, slowly and deliberately, so
that all could hear, "I've got a thousand dollars that says
he can't. And there it is." So saying, he slammed a sack
of gold dust of the size of a bologna sausage down upon the
bar.

Nobody spoke. Thornton's bluff, if bluff it was, had
been called. He could feel a flush of warm blood creeping up
his face. His tongue had tricked him. He did not know
whether Buck could start a thousand pounds. Half a ton! The
enormousness of it appalled him. He had great faith in
Buck's strength and had often thought him capable of
starting such a load; but never, as now, had he faced the
possibility of it, the eyes of a dozen men fixed upon him,
silent and waiting. Further, he had no thousand dollars; nor
had Hans and Pete.

Thornton did not reply. He did not know what to say.
He glanced from face to face in the absent way of a man
who has lost the power of thought and is seeking somewhere
to find the thing that will start it going again. The
face of Jim O'Brien, a Mastodon king and old-time comrade,
caught his eyes. It was a cue to him, seeming to rouse him
to do what he would never have dreamed of doing.

"Can you lend me a thousand?" he asked, almost in a
whisper.

"Sure," answered O'Brien, thumping down a plethoric sack
by the side of Matthewson's. "Though it's little faith I'm
having, John, that the beast can do the trick."

The Eldorado emptied its occupants into the street to
see the test. The tables were deserted, and the dealers
and gamekeepers came forth to see the outcome of the wager
and to lay odds. Several hundred men, furred and mittened,
banked around the sled within easy distance. Matthewson's
sled, loaded with a thousand pounds of flour, had been
standing for a couple of hours, and in the intense cold
--it was sixty below zero-- the runners had frozen fast to
the hard-packed snow. Men offered odds of two to one that
Buck could not budge the sled. A quibble arose concerning
the phrase "break out." O'Brien contended it was Thornton's
privilege to knock the runners loose, leaving Buck to "break
it out" from a dead standstill. Matthewson insisted that the
phrase included breaking the runners from the frozen grip
of the snow. A majority of the men who had witnessed the
making of the bet decided in his favor, whereat the odds
went up to three to one against Buck.

There were no takers. Not a man believed him capable of
the feat. Thornton had been hurried into the wager, heavy
with doubt; and now that he looked at the sled itself, the
concrete fact, with the regular team of ten dogs curled up in
the snow before it, the more impossible the task appeared.
Matthewson waxed jubilant.

"Three to one!" he proclaimed. "I'll lay you another
thousand at that figure, Thornton, What do you say?"

Thornton's doubt was strong in his face, but his
fighting spirit was aroused --the fighting spirit that
soars above odds, fails to recognize the impossible, and
is deaf to all save the clamor for battle. He called Hans
and Pete to him. Their sacks were slim, and with his own
the three partners could rake together only two hundred
dollars. In the ebb of their fortunes, this sum was their
total capital; yet they laid it unhesitatingly against
Matthewson's six hundred.

The team of ten dogs was unhitched, and Buck, with his
own harness, was put into the sled. He had caught the
contagion of the excitement, and he felt that in some way
he must do a great thing for John Thornton. Murmurs of
admiration at his splendid appearance went up. He was in
perfect condition, without an ounce of superfluous flesh,
and the one hundred and fifty pounds that he weighed were so
many pounds of grit and virility. His furry coat shone with
the sheen of silk. Down the neck and across the
shoulders, his mane, in repose as it was, half bristled and
seemed to lift with every movement, as though excess of
vigor made each particular hair alive and active. The
great breast and heavy fore legs were no more than in
proportion with the rest of his body, where the muscles
showed in tight rolls underneath the skin. Men felt these
muscles and proclaimed them hard as iron, and the odds
went down to two to one.

"Gad, sir! Gad, sir!" stuttered a member of the latest
dynasty, a king of the Skookum Benches. "I offer you eight
hundred for him, sir, before the test; eight hundred just as
he stands."

Thornton shook his head and stepped over to Buck's
side.

"You must stand off from him," Matthewson protested.
"Free play and plenty of room."

The crowd fell silent; only could be heard the voices
of the gamblers vainly offering two to one. Everybody
acknowledged Buck a magnificent animal, but twenty fifty-pound
sacks of flour bulked too large in their eyes for them to
loosen their pouch strings.

Thornton knelt down by Buck's side. He took his head
in his hands and rested cheek on cheek. He did not
playfully shake him, as was his wont, or murmur soft love
curses; but he whispered in his ear. "As you love me,
Buck. As you love me," was what he whispered. Buck whined
with suppressed eagerness.

The crowd was watching curiously. The affair was
growing mysterious. It seemed like a conjuration. As
Thornton got to his feet, Buck seized his mittened hand
between his jaws, pressing in with his teeth and releasing
slowly, half-reluctantly. It was the answer, in terms, not
of speech, but of love. Thornton stepped well back.

"Now, Buck," he said.

Buck tightened the traces, then slacked them for a
matter of several inches. It was the way he had learned.

"Gee!" Thornton's voice rang out, sharp in the tense
silence.

Buck swung to the right, ending the movement in a plunge
that took up the slack and with a sudden jerk arrested his
one hundred and fifty pounds. The load quivered, and from
under the runners arose a crisp crackling.

"Haw!" Thornton commanded.

Buck duplicated the maneuver, this time to the left. The
crackling turned into a snapping, the sled pivoting and the
runners slipping and grating several inches to the side.
The sled was broken out. Men were holding their breaths,
intensely unconscious of the fact.

"Now, MUSH!"

Thornton's command cracked out like a pistol shot. buck
threw himself forward, tightening the traces with a jarring
lunge. His whole body was gathered compactly together in
the tremendous effort, the muscles writhing and knotting like
live things under the silky fur. His great chest was low
to the ground, his head forward and down, while his feet
were flying like mad, the claws scarring the hard-packed
snow in parallel grooves. The sled swayed and trembled,
half-started forward. One of his feet slipped, and one man
groaned aloud. The sled lurched ahead in what appeared a
rapid succession of jerks, though it never really came to
a dead stop again . . . half an inch . . . an inch .
. . two inches . . . The jerks perceptibly diminished;
as the sled gained momentum, he caught them up, till it was
moving steadily along.

Men gasped and began to breath again, unaware that for
a moment they had ceased to breathe. Thornton was running
behind, encouraging Buck with short, cheery words. The
distance had been measured off, and as he neared the pile
of firewood which marked the end of the hundred yards, a
cheer began to grow and grow, which burst into a roar as
he passed the firewood and halted at command. Every man
was tearing himself loose, even Matthewson. Hats and
mittens were flying in the air. Men were shaking hands,
it did not matter with whom, and bubbling over in a general
incoherent babel.

But Thornton fell on his knees beside Buck. Head was
against head, and he was shaking him back and forth. Those
who hurried up heard him cursing Buck, and he cursed him
long and fervently, and softly and lovingly.

Thornton rose to his feet. His eyes were wet. The
tears were streaming frankly down his cheeks. "Sir," he
said to the Skookum Bench king, "no, sir. You can go to hell,
sir. It's the best I can do for you, sir."

Buck seized Thornton's hand in his teeth. Thornton
shook him back and forth. As though animated by a common
impulse, the onlookers drew back to a respectful distance;
nor were they again indiscreet enough to interrupt.